Reactive power management to enhance solar energy penetration in small grids: technical and framework approaches

Abstract

In the last few years, rising environmental concerns and especially, cost reductions that photovoltaic technology has experienced, have led to an unprecedented increase in the deployment of photovoltaic systems all over the world. Although nowadays most of the installed photovoltaic capacity is due to utility-scale plants, medium- and small-scale plants connected to distribution systems are becoming increasingly more frequent. Distribution networks were originally designed assuming a centralized operation, and the growing penetration of distributed generators is arising both technical and regulatory issues. In this work, we summarize different approaches from the technical and framework point of view.